T H E   N E X T   D A Y

Jessica was in a bad mood.

She had a hard time falling asleep last night, and when she doesn’t get a full eight hours of sleep, there’s hell to pay for anyone who crosses her path.

One of those people would be her younger sister.

Krystal Jung, a happy and innocent child, looked up to her sister as a role model—when she wasn’t her ice princess-y self—and considered the blonde the person she was closest with.

“Good morning, Unnie,” she greeted her sister upon exiting her bedroom and running into her sister in the hallway.  Krystal was dressed in her middle school uniform, ready for a day full of learning.  Her long dark hair was down, a navy blue headband keeping it from falling in her face.

Jessica stared at the hairband for the longest time before looking Krystal straight in the eye.  The younger girl flinched visibly from the ice in her sister’s brown eyes.

“Is that mine?” Jessica asked coldly.

The dark-haired girl patted her head.  “The headband?  Yeah.”

“Did you ask if you could borrow it?”

“Um, no.”

Jessica held out a hand, palm up.  “Then give it back.”

Krystal carefully removed it from her hair.  “Say please,” she teased, holding the headband out of the older girl’s reach.

“Krys, it’s mine.  Give it back,” Jessica huffed.

“No.”  She stuck out her tongue.  “Say please and I’ll give it back to you.”

 “Please give me back my headband,” the blonde spoke through clenched teeth.

Krystal pursed her lips, pretending to think about it.  “Nope,” she said after a second, dropping her sister’s headband on the carpeted floor.  She stepped over it and made her way down the steps.

“Krystal Jung!” Jessica shouted before bending down to pick up the hair accessory.

The dark-haired girl stopped in the middle of the stairs and turned around to face Jessica.  “Geez, sis, got PMS?”

“UGH!”

--

She dropped her books on her desk, creating a loud bang that drew her classmates’ attention towards herself before sitting down angrily in her seat.

Jessica’s brown eyes were unfocused, staring at nothing as she looked straight ahead.  Her arms were crossed across her chest and she leaned back against her chair.  She could feel the eyes of her classmates watching her, not a single one of them trying to be discrete.  She locked eyes with one of them—the same boy who spoke about her the first day she entered their class.  Her eyes were hard and cold, causing the boy to immediately blush from embarrassment and turn away to start a conversation with the closest person.  The others followed his lead, none of them wanting to receive a glare from the Ice Princess.

Unfortunately, that was when Jinki decided to arrive to class.  He didn’t sense the tense atmosphere in the classroom since he was already in a good mood himself.

“’Morning, Jessica,” he said, flashing the blonde one of his bright and gorgeous smiles before proceeding to unpack his bag of the items necessary for this class.

When he didn’t hear the blonde reply, he wasn’t all that surprised.  He took a look at her hard expression and thought that something might’ve been wrong.

He opened his mouth, intending to ask, but was interrupted by the teacher who made his grand entrance into the classroom.

After closing the door, the teacher slammed a pile of papers on the front desk, causing the two students who sat there to flinch in surprise.  Jinki, being the good student that he was, turned his attention to the strict teacher to see what he was going to assign for the day.

Jessica was only half listening to whatever the teacher was talking about as the students passed back the papers.  Instead, she had her arms crossed across her chest, glaring at some random part of the room.  She stared at it for so long, that it just became a blur.

Only when a paper landed on her desk, did she shift her eyes to read it.

The title of the paper caught her attention, causing her to officially declare today the second worst day of her life—the first being the day she moved to Korea.

Partner Project: the History of South Korea

She faintly heard the teacher’s voice from the front of the room, concentrating long enough to catch the last of his words.

“Work with the person sitting next to you.  It’s due in two weeks.”

--

Once the teacher finished giving out the instructions, Jinki turned to the blonde sitting next to him and asked, “So when do you want to start working on it?”

Jessica sighed.  She really didn’t feel like doing anything, but she wasn’t one of those students who stuck their partner with all the work.  Back in California, she had a lot of project partners who did that to her, and she hated it.  The blonde also didn’t like waiting until the last minute to finish important assignments, and this one was worth half her grade!

“Let’s start during lunch,” she stated.  “We can do research at the library.”

Jinki was caught off guard, but was happy all the same—he, too, didn’t like procrastinating.

“Okay,” he agreed.

--

Jessica threw her pen down on her notebook in annoyance.  It was taking her forever to get through one page in the book she got off one of the selves in the library.

She looked down at the thick book once again, slowly reading through the text written in Hangul.

Jinki looked around the shelf, seeing Jessica still seated at one of the tables, grabbing her unnaturally blonde hair in anger.  He pulled a couple more books off the shelf before sitting down across from her.

“You okay?” he asked.

She looked up at him through her long eyelashes.  “Yeah, I’m just peachy.”  He noted her sarcasm.

“Um, I don’t mean to offend you,” Jinki started off, “but can you not read Hangul?”

He saw her cheeks heat up in embarrassment, and Jessica quickly placed the palm of her hands against them, trying to cool them off.  “I can read it just fine.”

She picked up her pen and proceeded to take some more notes, writing the Hangul characters slowly and neatly.

Jinki shrugged his shoulders, going back to his own research.

He had scribbled down a few notes from the book when he heard the blonde make a sound of frustration.

A quick shush was heard from the nearby librarian.

Jessica, feeling defeated, placed her head on the table, resting it on her arms.

Jinki looked at the blonde, feeling sorry for her.  It must be really hard moving to a new country, especially one with a completely different language and writing system.

Sighing, Jinki put down his pen and closed the book in front of him.  “How about we finish researching after school?  We can take some of these books with us and you can come over to my place.”

Jessica lifted her head, hesitant to reply to Jinki’s offer.

Smiling brightly since the blonde didn’t flat out refuse, Jinki said, “I’ll feed you dinner also.”

Feeling her stomach growl, there was no way she could say no now.

--

[posted: 06.22.13]]